


Spring

by katjh



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 02:33:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katjh/pseuds/katjh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is so cold for the Winter Soldier.</p><p>He's waiting for the thaw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allofthefandoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allofthefandoms/gifts).



_"How much sleep are you getting?" Dr. Johansen asked near the end of their session._

_Bucky paused to think of how to answer, because the truth is, he sleeps in the moments between daybreak and sunrise, the time it takes for a star to sparkle or a match to flare into life, the instant a word goes from being on the tip of your tongue to out of your mouth._

_"Few hours," he mumbled, voice thick._

 

 

He cut his hair as soon as he had the chance. He wanted to put everything about the Winter Soldier behind him. He wore long-sleeved shirts to avoid looking at his arm, at the red star on his shoulder.

He had asked Stark to make a new arm for him, but it was still in the works, apparently. So Bucky wore gloves and long sleeves and tried to ignore the way his metal arm was always so cold.

 

And, as soon as SHIELD would let him out, Bucky went to live with Steve.

"I just want everything to be back to normal," Bucky confessed, lying on Steve's couch with a glass of whiskey in his (flesh and blood) hand. He didn't drink vodka. It tasted like Russia and blood.

Steve watched him with those big, sad eyes, like he was trying to work out how to help Bucky. Bucky wanted to go over there and shake him, tell him there wasn't anything he could do. The Red Room, Project X, they'd looked over him and found every flaw, every crack; they had wormed their way into his brain. And now that Bucky was out of their control, he felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

There never would be any normal again. Hell, it stopped being normal a long time ago, when Steve went from scrawny and asthmatic to being an Adonis, the hero of the good ol' boys and the Stars and Stripes.

It stopped being normal when it went from Bucky saving Steve's ass to Steve saving Bucky's.

 

"Ain't it crazy how we both ended up in the 21st century together?" Bucky asked. He lifted his glass to Steve and laughed, but it sounded broken even to him.

Steve smiled and nodded, probably just to humor Bucky's drunken melancholy, and he tipped the bottle of whiskey into his own glass.

Steve couldn't get drunk, but Bucky was just grateful he wasn't drinking alone. Things just felt a lot shittier when he was drinking on his own.

 

Steve went to bed around one. Bucky passed out somewhere between two and three (and he knew this because _Friends_ was still on the TV when his eyes slid shut). He awoke again before dawn and just sat watching infomercials.

He was still drunk, tipping into hungover, and he was awake. If he had dreamed, he didn't remember.

It was better that way.

 

 

_"Are these yours?"_

_Bucky looked up from his book to see Steve holding a bottle of pills. There was no point in lying. He knew his name was on the bottle. "Yeah," he said._

_Steve turned the bottle over in his hand. "These are sleeping pills," he said at last, looking up from reading the label. "Filled a month ago. It says to take one before bed to help you sleep, and another two hours after that if you still can't." He lowered the bottle and fixed Bucky with a look, the kind he used to use when Bucky was being particularly stupid about something. "Bucky, this is still full."_

_"Yeah," Bucky said. He looked down again at his book but he wasn't reading it. The words didn't make any sense. They sat on the page, made up of dead letters that couldn't put the sounds together._

_Steve sat on the arm of the couch and gently took Bucky's book from his hands. He placed it face-down on the end table and put the bottle into Bucky's (flesh and blood) hand. "I know you're not sleeping," he said, closing Bucky's fingers around the bottle. "Take one tonight, okay?"_

_"Okay," Bucky said._

 

_He didn't. He cheeked the pill and swallowed a mouthful of water and Steve smiled sadly and said, "I'll make sure I'm quiet tonight."_

_Guilt tasted bitter in Bucky's mouth. He spat out the pill as soon as Steve left the room and lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling for hours._

_The way Steve looked at Bucky in the morning seemed to cut right through the lies, but Steve didn't say anything, and neither did Bucky._

 

 

The room was cold and white, but he was free to move around. There was a camera in one of the corners, between the walls and the ceiling. Its little mechanical eye followed Bucky as he paced from one end to the other.

If he had dreamed in that cold, drug-induced slumber, he didn't remember it. All he remembered was dark and cold, and now he was locked in a room that was bright and cold.

Underneath his white scrubs his shoulder had been bandaged. He could feel it throbbing cold and red. There was dried blood under his fingernails from when he'd scraped and scratched at the icy metal joined to the warm flesh of his shoulder, and his throat flared with pain every time he swallowed, reminders of his screams and shouts to _take it off, get it off, it's dead._

 

He stopped pacing to sit down, squatting on his heels with his arms draped over his knees and his head hanging down.

_"You're lucky," Natasha said to him, and he couldn't help but hear her words in Russian, though he knew she spoke English then. "They had to learn how to unmake me and put me back together."_

_His head had shot up and he had looked into her eyes, and they looked so dead and cold, and he wondered what it was she had had to go through, when his salvation had been so hard._

He breathed in. The room smelled like disinfectant. He closed his eyes.

 

"Bucky?"

He didn't look up, not even when Dr. Johansen squatted down next to him (close but not close enough to touch) and said, "Bucky, it's Dr. Johansen."

"I know." His voice was still hoarse and it scraped against his raw throat. He swallowed and said, "I'm okay. I'm not going to do that again."

"Are you sure?" she asked. Her voice was soft and gentle and not at all accusing. He liked that about her. "We can do something about it if you're uncomfortable."

"No," Bucky said. He reached to touch his metal bicep. It was still so cold it was almost painful on his palm, but he didn't flinch. "It's going to be okay."

Dr. Johansen was quiet for a while, but then Bucky heard her stand up (her knees creaked when she straightened) and she said, "All right. You can go home if you like. We'll have a session tomorrow."

"Okay," he said. He waited until she walked out before he let his hand drop and he stood up. He looked directly at the camera watching him. It was just a machine. It didn't understand, it only watched.

 

He walked out of the cold, white room and he went home.

 

"I'm sorry," Steve said as soon as Bucky walked in the door.

"Why?" Bucky asked. He shut the door and pulled off his jacket before remembering that the bandage could be seen in the v-neck of his scrubs.

Steve walked over and touched it gently, fingers just brushing over the edges of the gauze. His other hand was wrapped around Bucky's metal arm and it felt warm and comforting, but all Bucky wanted to do was pull it out of Steve's grip so he wouldn't feel the cold.

"I made you take the sleeping pills," Steve said, oblivious to Bucky's inner war. "I... I didn't think you'd react like that."

"It wasn't them," Bucky said truthfully. The confession was on the tip of his tongue, but Steve was backing away with his fingers still gripping Bucky's arm like it wasn't some monstrous, unnatural limb. He didn't mean to flinch when Steve stroked it, but it happened anyway.

"What is it?" Steve asked, looking down at Bucky's arm.

Bucky looked down. "It's cold," he said. "It's always cold."

Steve let go of the metal and his warm hand came up to Bucky's jaw, lifted his head so he could see Steve's face. "It's not cold, Bucky. It's just as warm as the rest of you."

Bucky breathed out. His metal fingers flexed. "It's so cold," he mumbled. "It's like ice, and when I try to sleep it spreads _and I don't want the winter anymore._ " There were tears in his eyes but he didn't wipe them away. They'd just freeze on his cheeks. He didn't resist as Steve led him through the living room to the bedroom and laid him down on his bed – Steve's bed, which was made perfectly with even the comforter folded back a little and _Steve even made hospital corners_ , and it was his own bed and his own apartment – and settled in next to Bucky, wrapping an arm around his middle.

And, for the first time in decades, he felt warm.

 


End file.
